


(:` the bright commacals ,:)

by sonshineandshowers



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Humor, Silly, Slight Emotional Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23336341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonshineandshowers/pseuds/sonshineandshowers
Summary: Working on profiles and cases always came with reports that needed to be finished and turned into records. They're not fun.The one wherein Malcolm is whumped with spelling and punctuation.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39





	(:` the bright commacals ,:)

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens when you read a coma, and then think hmmm, what if a comma. for my wonderful friends <3 who spark great inspiration

Malcolm stood in Sandy Aaron’s dining room, getting the remaining information on a doctor who had provided elderly patients heart medications that turned out to be placebos. Three patients had died. Sandy was the only patient they had spoken with who had remembered the doctor’s name.

“She’s Doctor qcbsynulbsrhlnh,” Sandy told him, stirring her tea. 

“Doctor what?” Malcolm looked up from his notebook.

“Doctor qcbsynulbsrhlnh,” she repeated, more interested in her newspaper laid out on the table than him.

He sighed, feeling dumb that he wasn’t able to translate what she was saying into letters. “You’re going to need to spell that for me.”

“Z - f - bsynulbsrhlnh.” She filled in a few squares in her crossword and took a sip of tea.

“Let me read that back.” Malcolm ran his pen under each of the letters. “Z - f - c — “

“No, no, no.” She shook her head at him.

This damn spelling would be the death of him.

“Qcbsynulbsrhlnh. P - f - e - s - e — ” She punctuated each letter with her hand.

Malcolm paused her listing with his hand, thinking he would have a better chance of getting it right in smaller batches. “P - f - e - s - e — “

“ _No_! And you’re the one with the badge,” she scoffed, scribbling harder into her newspaper.

Malcolm quickly shook his head. “No, no badge. Consul — “

“ _P - f - e - f_ \- f - u - s — “

“P - f - e - f - f - u - s — “

“Give me that _damn_ paper.” She reached for his notebook, and he handed it over.

She scripted the name onto the page, her curling letters bending into multiple lines. “Peppernuts?” he read.

She grabbed the notebook back again, writing in _gigantic_ capital letters, triple the size of what she’d written in her crossword.

Malcolm looked at the paper — P - F - E - F - F - E - R - N - Ü - S - S - E. “Pfeffernüsse? Like the German cookie?”

“Yes! What I’ve been telling you this whole time. Dr. Pfeffernüsse. Lock her up,” she declared, returning to and filling in another row in her crossword.

“Thank you.” He stashed his pen back in his pocket. “That’s enough for me to follow up.”

He took a whooshing deep breath, escaping with a little sanity still intact.

* * *

He spent the afternoon at one of his least favorite activities: typing. Working on profiles and cases always came with reports that needed to be finished and turned into records. He submitted his report on Dr. Pfeffernüsse and waited for the checkmark to come back that he was all clear so he could go home to Sunshine.

It pinged back: **X**. _Please correct in accordance with article 218B_.

Article 218B? Of course there wasn’t a link to it. He searched through the department records reference and found that he had used dashes in between the dates instead of periods. Stabbed in the back by a damn dash, a pointless difference in his line of work. He _corrected_ and submitted again.

 **X**. _Please correct in accordance with article 218C_.

Reference again: _semicolon usage not permitted_. Who wrote these things? Why did any of this matter? Dumb, dumb — the curved hook carved away at his patience. He swapped the few semicolons for em dashes and submitted again.

 **X**. _Please correct in accordance with article 218D_.

Was this the Articles of Confederation? Were there signings of declarations? Could he get on whatever committee had created this ridiculousness just to abolish all of the rules? What in the world? Reference — _colon usage not permitted_. He wanted to take the damn rules to someone’s colon right about now. He replaced the _one_ colon with an em dash and submitted again.

 **X**. _Please correct in accordance with article 218E_.

Was is so difficult to present all the issues at once instead of making him go on a manhunt? Reference — _must use the Oxford comma_. What in the actual _f - u - c - k_ — he pulled at his hair, thinking it’d be laying all over his keyboard by the time he was done. He found _one_ place a comma was missing before an and, poked it in, and submitted again.

 **X**. _Please correct in accordance with article 250_.

Well, at least he'd gotten out of the alphabet of 218s. _There should not be any orphan parentheses_.

He wanted to scoop out someone’s eye.

He was an _ivy_ league educated, well qualified profiler, and he was stuck after work fighting with a damn rulebook. He wanted to _burn_ it with the bluest fire he could come by, douse it in water, and grind the ashes until the dust was so fine it was invisible.

He pounded the keys harder, searching for every instance of an open parenthesis and pecking enter each time he saw they were closed. He finally found _one_ unclosed parenthesis in the middle and completed the requested action. Submit.

 **X**. _Please correct in accordance with article 250_.

He tossed the keyboard crashing back into the monitor, sprung from his chair, and paced in front of their desks. Everyone else had gone home. Gil poked his head out of his office. “Kid?”

“Damn reports,” Malcolm seethed, his hands closing and unclosing in rapid succession.

“Not my favorite,” Gil admitted.

“I did my job — I just need the stupid system to take it.” One hand narrowly missed hitting one of the dividers between the desks.

“Let me guess — 218s?” Gil supposed, stepping a little closer.

“Yes. Made it up to the 250s now.” His pathing line got smaller and smaller until he was practically spinning around in circles.

“Go home,” Gil directed, just out of arm’s reach.

“I am _not_ starting the day with that tomorrow,” Malcolm disagreed, abruptly stopping his pacing.

“Send it over to my desk — I’ll finish it.” Gil rested his hand on his shoulder.

Malcolm rushed to his computer, “Thank you,” hidden in a pound of key clicks to get it to Gil.

“Don’t get used to this,” Gil warned, shaking his head at him.

“I won’t — “

“JT found some formatter — see if you get it from him.”

“Thanks, Gil.”

“Go get some _actual_ sleep.” Gil met his eyes, conveying he was worried.

Malcolm twisted his lips to the side. “I kind of want pfeffernüsse cookies.”

“What?” Surprised confusion covered Gil's face.

“P - f - e — “

Gil held his hand up. “Don’t bother. Just bring me some tomorrow.”

Malcolm nodded.

“Night, kid.”

Gil disappeared back to his office, leaving Malcolm to go home to memories of scribbles in his notebook.

* * *

Gil searched for open parentheses, then closed parentheses, finding one instance of a closed parenthesis that was never opened. Submitted again.

 **X**. _Please correct in accordance with article 251_.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

_fin_


End file.
